Spicy food and chili pepper challenges are all the rage in 2016. Thus, it is no surprise that many restaurants and eateries have embraced this trend, creating food challenges for their patrons. Most of these challenges feature foods infused with a variety of the world’s hottest peppers.
However, many have hailed these “pepper masters” as crazy people who do not value their stomachs or lives. These “haters” have had their fill of laughs from people failing challenges, but now this fad has taken a turn for the worse.
A man from San Francisco has had a near-death experience after eating a burger smothered with a ghost pepper purée. Ghost peppers are considered one of the hottest peppers on the planet. It ranks a million units on the Scoville scale, a means of registering a pepper’s spiciness. To give a comparison, a jalapeño pepper only comes in at a lowly 5,000 Scoville units.
This unfortunate incident is believed to be the first near-death experience related to a pepper and was therefore covered in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.
The 47-year-old man reportedly experienced severe abdominal and chest pains, followed by violent retching and vomiting. During that time, a hole was torn in his esophagus and that led to his lung collapsing.
Read the full story from SFist here.
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